Nevada County picayune., 1887-04-27
BILL IVES RAILROAD PASS.
Lines on Returning the Blasted Document of the Genial Giver.

annual pass NO. Q Ooo TOT selI ana family over your justly celebrated road during the year 1887. l also return your photograph and letters you have written me during the past five years. Will you kindly return mine! And so this brief and beautiful experience is to end and each of us must go on his way hereafter. Alas.
 To you this may be easy, bat 1t brings pang to my heart which your gentle letter of the lst inst, cannot wholly alleviate.
 Whenever hereafter, you look upon this tear-speckled pass will you not remember me! Remember that you have cast me from you and that l am wandering across the bleak and wind-swept plains, sadly enumerating the ties on my way to eternity.
 I do not say this to reproach you, for l fear that you care tor another, and so we could not be happy again together. But, oh! do you pause to fully comprehend the pang it costs me to return thls pleasant-f faced little pass with it's conditions on the back? Could you see me even now. as 1 write these lines, turning away ever and anon, laying aside my trembling pen to go sit by the grate and shudder and weep and put out the fire with my bitter tears, your heart would say Return. o, wanderer, re- turnw
 You do not say in your letter that have been false to you or that 1 have ever grown cold. You do not charge me with intidel- ity or failure to provide. You sim ply say that it would be better for each to go his several ways, for getting that my several ways are passing away, passing away.
 It is all well enough for you to talk about going your several ways. You have every facility for doing so, but with me it is differ ent. Several years ago a large North. western cyclone and myself tried to pass each other on the same track. When the wrecking crew found me l was in the crotch of butternut tree with a broken leg. Since that time l have walked with great difficulty, and to go my several ways has been very seri- ous matter to me.
 But l do not want you to think that l am murmuring, l accept my doom calmly, yet with a slight tinge of unavaiing regret.
 Some time perhaps, in the mid dle of the dark and angry night, the cold blasts wailing through the telegraph wires and the crashing sleet rushes with wild and impet- uous fury against the window ot your special car. as you lie warmly ensconced in your voluptuous berth and hear the pitiless winds with hoarse and croupy moans chase each other around the Kan sas haystacks or shriek wildly away as they light out for their cheer less home in the Bad Lands, will you not think of me as l groupe on blindly through the keen and pitt less blasts, stumbling over cattle guards, falling into culverts, and beating my rare young brains out against your rough right of way, will you not think of me? l do not ask much of you, but l do ask this as we separate forever.
 As you whiz by me do not treat me with contumely, or throw crackers at me when l have meek ly turned out to let your naughty old train go by. l have always spoken of you in the highest terms and | hope you will do the same by me
 Life is short at the best, and 1t is especially so to those who have to walk. Walking has already shortened my life great deal, and l wouldn't be surprised if the eX. posture and bunions of the year 1887 carried me off, leaving a gap in American literature that will look like new cellar.
 should any of your engineers or trackmeu lind me frozen in cut next winter, when the grass gets short and the nights get long will you kindly ask them to report the brand 10 your auditor and instruct him to allow my family what he